The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office has listed the Fort Worth Police Department as an independent investigator of jail deaths since at least 2021. But the police never investigated those deaths, a spokesperson confirmed to the Fort Worth Report and KERA.
Instead, police reviewed only the internal investigation conducted by the sheriff’s office itself — in apparent violation of state law, according to the state’s jail oversight body, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.
The lack of oversight, first reported by Bolts magazine, means more than 20 in-custody deaths were never investigated by an outside entity. The state jail agency did not realize that Fort Worth police weren’t actually investigating until being contacted by a reporter, Executive Director Brandon Wood said in an interview Wednesday.
The commission has since contacted Tarrant County and told officials to fix the problem.
“They are aware of our position on this, and any deaths in custody that occur are required to have an outside law enforcement agency conduct an investigation,” Wood said.
In written answers to emailed questions following the publication of this story, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office maintained that the department is not breaking the law.
“The Fort Worth Police Department’s Major Case Unit is given the entire investigation packet after TCSO Criminal Investigators have completed the gathering of all documents,” spokesperson Robbie Hoy wrote in a statement. “Keep in mind, FWPD Major Case Unit is a highly knowledgeable and respected team who fully understands all that is required for a solid case. FWPD then reviews the investigation packet, which is in accordance with state law. If they determine a need to further investigate, they have the authority to do so.”
The Sandra Bland Act, signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2017, requires an independent law enforcement agency to investigate every in-custody death. A sheriff’s office can conduct its own investigation, too, but it doesn’t replace an independent investigation.
Fort Worth police spokesperson Officer Jimmy Pollozani confirmed that the department does not conduct investigations of deaths in the Tarrant County Jail.
“Our department does review these investigations ONCE THEY ARE COMPLETED,” Pollozani wrote in an email, capitalizing the end of the sentence. “The investigative write-ups and files are prepared by Tarrant County detectives, and our review follows once the investigation has been finalized.”
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards has been advised of every in-custody death investigation and never rejected the reviews or indicated concerns until the last few days, Hoy wrote.
“This system has been in place for years,” he continued. “FWPD is also notified of in-custody deaths when they occur. The law mandates the commission to appoint an investigative agency. Should the commission have determined a concern with the process, we would have been notified.”
The state agency has received the Fort Worth police reviews of each death, but commission staff missed the fact they weren’t complete investigations, Wood said. Jail death reports submitted to the Texas Attorney General’s Office show, in some cases, the sheriff’s office said the police would investigate the deaths. In other cases, it said the police would review the death.
The Fort Worth Report and KERA have submitted open records for the full reviews submitted to the state agency.
When asked why it took so long to identify the problem, Wood blamed a backlog of documentation about in-custody deaths from 2020 and 2021, as well as staff turnover.
“It was one of those where we’ve been playing catch-up for, unfortunately, way too long in that area,” he said.
Now that the state agency knows about the issue, it’s prepared to take action. If the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office fails to get a third-party investigation again, it could be declared noncompliant with the state’s minimum jail standards, Wood said.
Noncompliance is a red letter for jails. Their violations are listed on the commission’s website until the problems are corrected. Tarrant County was previously declared noncompliant in 2020, after jailers missed checks on a prisoner who died by suicide.
Waybourn has said the jail has met minimum standards consistently since then — a fact he has pointed to as he defends jail operations amid wrongful death lawsuits and criminal charges against sheriff’s office employees.
Wood said other Texas counties also have occasionally broken the law by getting reviews instead of investigations from other law enforcement agencies.
Dean Malone has noticed the same issue. He’s an attorney who often represents families of people who have died in Texas jails, including some cases in Tarrant County.
“Let’s not forget here we have elected sheriffs in this state. They’re politicians in one respect, and they have no incentive from a political perspective to allow outside agencies to point the finger at their county or jail,” he said.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office has a responsibility to go back and make sure each death gets a real third-party investigation, said Krish Gundu, co-founder of watchdog group the Texas Jail Project.
“You’re not supposed to be investigating yourself,” she said.
Malone called the lack of independent investigation “appalling.” Going back and investigating the deaths now would not be easy, he said.
“You just can’t wait several years to do it. The investigation will not be as it would be when it’s fresh,” he said.
The sheriff’s office should also notify families of people who died in custody of the failure to investigate, Gundu added.
“It’s a travesty of justice. It’s an utter travesty,” she said.
Hoy said the sheriff’s office has no intention to reopen cases unless the need arises.
“All in-custody deaths have been thoroughly investigated in accordance with Texas law,” he wrote. “Multiple independent investigations and reviews occur with any in-custody death. Investigative personnel include TCSO, the TC Medical Examiners Office and FWPD Major Case.”
Reviews vs. investigations
Some of the deaths assigned to the Fort Worth Police Department date back to 2021. Wood said that, although the department didn’t do a full investigation of each death, it wasn’t just rubber stamping them, either.
“It was more than just, ‘Hey, we looked at it. It looks good,’” he said. “Whenever the packets were pulled, the information on the one- or two-page document that was submitted indicated and used the term review, not investigation. They reviewed the entire investigation and left comments.”
The reviews conducted by the police differ from the full investigations conducted by other law enforcement agencies, such as the Texas Rangers. The Rangers handled most of Tarrant County’s third-party death investigations until 2021, records show.
KERA has obtained Rangers investigation reports for multiple deaths. In those investigations, Rangers show up on the scene, review records and interview detention officers.
In 2020, after the death of Javonte Myers, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office advised investigating Ranger Trace McDonald to check the observation logs — the record guards make to confirm they did their required checks on prisoners.
McDonald compared the observation logs to surveillance footage outside Myers’ cell. He found that two jailers lied about checking on Myers, he wrote in his investigation report. Myers was later found to have died of a seizure disorder.
One of those jailers pleaded guilty to falsifying a government document earlier this year. The other is awaiting trial.
The Rangers are the best choice for investigating jail deaths, Malone said. He represented Myers’ family in their lawsuit against Tarrant County.
“A Texas Ranger investigated that death that, in my perspective, did a really good job doing so,” he said of McDonald.
The Rangers have been scrutinized for the quality of their third-party death investigations. In the 2019 death of Robert Miller, McDonald didn’t review the video of the altercation that preceded Miller’s death, the New York Times reported. He let a Tarrant County deputy review the video instead.
McDonald was hired by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office in 2021, according to county employment records — the same year the sheriff’s office started listing the Fort Worth Police Department as its outside investigating agency.
Hoy, the sheriff’s spokesperson, said the office started working with the Fort Worth Police Department because of resourcing problems.
“Around 2021, the Texas Rangers requested assistance with in-custody deaths due to the strain on their manpower and additional responsibilities placed on them regarding the Texas border,” Hoy wrote. “However, we continue to utilize the Texas Rangers to investigate cases of concern such as those involving misconduct.”
Jail deaths under public scrutiny
The issue of deaths in jail has become the defining issue of Waybourn’s tenure. More than 65 people have died in custody since he took office in 2017.
Waybourn has blamed the rising jail population and the relative ill health of prisoners for the ballooning number of deaths compared to his predecessor. There’s nothing he can do about someone in jail who has stage four cancer, he’s said previously.
But activists, politicians and families of those who died say abuse and negligence have played a part in many deaths.
In the last two years, Tarrant County has spent more than $3.5 million in lawsuit payouts over problems in the jail.
The family of Myers got $1 million in a settlement, the biggest settlement in county history at the time.
That record didn’t stand for long. Chasity Congious got a $1.2 million settlement months later. Congious gave birth alone in her cell in 2020, and her daughter, Zenorah, died 10 days later.
The family of Anthony Johnson Jr. is currently suing the county after his death in April. Johnson died of asphyxiation after jailers pepper sprayed him, and one knelt on his back while he was restrained. Instead of intervening, a supervisor filmed the incident.
The supervisor and the detention officer who knelt on Johnson have been indicted for murder.
While all other deaths in 2024 were assigned to the Fort Worth Police Department for investigation, Johnson’s death is an exception. That investigation was assigned to the Texas Rangers.
In 2023, state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, proposed a bill that would make deaths from natural causes exempt from third-party investigation. Waybourn supported the measure at the time, arguing that the investigation requirement wastes Texas Rangers’ time. It passed the Texas Senate, but did not become law.
“In all deaths in custody, the medical examiner still reviews it, the AG reviews it, the Texas Jail still reviews it. I just think maybe we can look at a better way of doing that,” Waybourn said during a 2022 Senate committee hearing. “We want accountability, but sometimes it’s like, ‘Golly, what else could he be doing, a murder case or something else other than reviewing this case.’”
This story has been updated with comments from the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org. Email Emily Wolf at emily.wolf@fortworthreport.org.
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